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Spiers, Barnes out at the NY Observer

By Dylan Byers

08/02/12 01:20 PM EDT

Elizabeth Spiers, the editor-in-chief of New York's beloved salmon-colored weekly the Observer, is stepping down at the end of this month after little more than a year on the job, the paper announced today. Sources at the paper confirm that Christopher Barnes, the paper's president, will also step down.

“I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built to date and will miss the fun of putting out the Observer every week and doing the kind of smart, witty stories we do,” Spiers, who is leaving to launch her own start-up, said in the announcement on the Observer's website. “But I’m also leaving it in excellent hands and look forward to enjoying it as a reader with no red pen in my hand.”

Aaron Gell, the paper's executive editor, will become interim* editor-in-chief, overseeing the Observer in print and online.

Spiers, who joined the Observer in January 2011, was seen as a risky choice for the paper. She was the paper's fourth editor in as many years, and had a long track record of early departures. (At the time, one of her former colleagues described her career to me as going “pillar to post...flotsam and jetsam...not quite nailing anything.”) Some predicted Spiers would not last more than a year; in fact, she lasted a year and a half. Her performance was met with mixed reviews, though she succeeded in expanding the paper's online verticals, increasing web traffic, and overseeing a successful redesign of both the online and print editions.

Barnes, meanwhile, was a controversial figure within the paper. Hired to beef up ad sales, he was at times blamed by both business and editorial staff for compromising the paper's strong editorial repuation. Spiers' predecessor Kyle Pope, who memorably referred to the paper as a "shitshow" prior to his own departure, is said to have clashed with Barnes and even requested that he instead report to the paper's owner, the 31-year-old real estate heir and son-in-law to Donald Trump, Jared Kushner.

In the announcement of Spiers departure, Kushner called Spiers "a phenomenal editor and manager."

“Not only did she bring on a wonderful team, she redesigned the paper and websites, launched a slew of new verticals and Web properties, and invigorated the newsroom, all while more than doubling Web traffic," Kushner said. "I’m grateful for her efforts, and I look forward to seeing what she does next.”

Spiers will take on a part-time consultant role on the business side, though sources described that as a formality.

*UPDATE: Nick Rizzo, man about the New York City media scene, has Kushner's internal memo to staff, in which he notes that Gell will only be interim editor-in-chief and confirms Barnes' departure.